The first review, by Tom Hardcastle, was published in June 2013 (Plant Methods 9:16). It gives an introduction to the role of cytosine methylation in the regulation of gene expression, and then goes through the stages of methylome sequencing.

Arther Korte’s review on genome wide association studies (GWAS) was published in July (Plant Methods 9:29). The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of GWAS and what makes a good study.

Most recently a review on NGS for complex crop genomes by Klaus Mayer and colleagues was published (Plant Methods 9:35). They overview various approaches to managing extremely large, complex genomes like the recently sequenced wheat genome. They focus specifically on the Genome Zipper, which Mayer presented at the workshop.

The one day conference was held at the University of Liverpool in November last year. It demonstrated the extent to which plant scientists are already using NGS for a range of different applications. The talks covered genome-wide association studies, mutant identification, genome mapping, transcriptomics (by both the ‘traditional’ RNA-seq and new method direct RNA sequencing), and chromatin mapping.